SC2 team leads and members represented a wide range of experience in terms of tenure and seniority. According to the SC2 Council’s web survey of SC2 team members, 38 percent of team members had less than 5 years of experience with the federal government, while 29 percent had more than 20 years of experience. 23

In many ways, the team members are the heart of this intervention. Their experience, expertise, intelligence, and relationship networks are the tools by which change is expected to happen. A significant portion of our data collection explored the skills, experience, and pilot activities of SC2 team leads and members. We have identified several cha

Related to the commitment of agencies to the pilot, agencies varied in the extent to which they either understood or promoted the underlying vision of SC2, that of a bottom-up approach driven by the priorities of cities, with the federal role being one of flexible assistance to accomplish city priorities.

Agency leadership’s commitment to the pilot was seen in the number of agency staff and amount of staff time dedicated to the pilot, how many members were embedded in cities (vs. working remotely), the level of access the SC2 team and city had to senior-level agency officials, and the leadership’s support for SC2’s bottom-up approach to assis

Certain characteristics of federal agencies seemed to affect the ability of SC2 teams to address city priorities during the pilot. The most important of these were agency leadership’s level of commitment to the pilot, agencies’ collective ability to move beyond traditional approaches to working with localities, and agencies’ ability to colla

Pilot cities came to the SC2 pilot with varying levels of capacity that affected their experience and what was accomplished. Distressed cities often lack sufficient financial resources and staff capacity to address the challenges they face. While the pilot offered these cities substantial resources at no cost, some of the cities had so little capa

The degree to which the mayor embraced the SC2 team’s effort varied across the six pilot cities. The mayors’ commitment to the SC2 effort was demonstrated in the extent to which the mayors set the vision for the SC2 teams’ work in their communities, how city leadership interacted with the SC2 team lead, and the degree to which the importance

The SC2 pilot is, by design, flexible and adaptable to local needs. This program model encourages cities to take the lead in defining the priorities on which SC2 teams focus their efforts. Overwhelmingly, we heard that the SC2 pilot worked best when city leadership was committed to the partnership and guided the SC2 team toward what they hoped to

The SC2 pilot was designed to create new partnerships between the federal government and the pilot cities in order to address city challenges and bring about new opportunities for economic revitalization. In this chapter we discuss factors affecting the ability of SC2 teams to address city priorities from the perspective of these partners, includi

While the SC2 teams undertook a vast number of activities, not all activities were completed, and among completed activities only a subset were regarded as key accomplishments by stakeholders interviewed for this study. The evaluation team’s discussions with pilot city stakeholders and team members examined what the SC2 teams were able to accomp

SC2 teams conducted a range of activities in keeping with the goals of the SC2 pilot and in response to the priorities of the pilot cities. Activities varied across pilot cities due to the individual priorities of the cities, the makeup of the SC2 teams assigned to each city, and the capacity of the cities to address economic development opportuni

The early months of SC2 pilot implementation involved the development and refinement of a work plan in each city, the assignment of specific tasks to team members, and initial work on those assignments. The work plan represented a detailed strategy for how a SC2 team would attempt to address its city’s priority areas and needs. Pilot cities took

At the outset of the engagements, SC2 team leads tended to serve as the primary liaison between team members and city representatives. Most cities had a main point of contact to represent the city—either appointed by the mayor or, in some cases, the mayor him/herself—and that person and the SC2 team lead communicated frequently and informally.

The second form of SC2 team communication was among team members who worked for the same agency in different pilot cities. Only a few agencies had their team members across sites meet formally or regularly. The Department of Justice (DOJ), for instance, had a monthly call, and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) team members from three c

Communication within the SC2 teams typically followed a hub-and-spoke structure, with the SC2 team lead serving as the hub. SC2 team leads communicated frequently with individual team members, either through organized team meetings or as the need arose. Every site had team meetings, but the frequency and formality of meetings varied by site. Among

To accomplish their work, SC2 teams engaged in three types of communication: internal SC2 team communication, communication between team members and their respective home agencies, and communication between the SC2 teams and their partner cities. The methods of communication in each city and for each agency varied by what each team felt was most p

The role of team members, at the most basic level, was to help the pilot cities address challenges and opportunities as determined in the assessment process or as they emerged during the course of implementation. As such, the members’ roles naturally varied across cities and from one member to another.

Each city designated a key point of contact to represent the city to the SC2 team. These individuals were high-level staffers with direct access to the mayor, or as noted above, in two cities the mayor served as the primary point of contact. The SC2 teams worked with these key city staff members to structure the engagement and implement activities

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